There aren’t a lot of investments paying good dividends these days. But the Republicans have definitely found one: funding Norm Coleman’s hopeless court suit to try to find some way to let him be senator again. As a matter of principle, I don’t really like when people try to shame candidates into throwing in the towel. Elections are important; candidates and supporters put immense energy, money and effort into winning them. So as long as a candidate thinks he or she won, they should be free to pursue whatever remedies and legal avenues are available. That said, it’s worth considering what Republicans are getting — not by keeping Coleman’s hopeless effort alive but far more importantly by delaying Al Franken’s swearing in.

The Stimulus Bill battle is a good example. The Dems needed Specter, Collins and Snowe to get the thing through. With Franken they would have needed only two of those votes. I don’t know precisely what each of them wanted. But I don’t think there’s much doubt that would have led to a less watered-down bill. And it seems quite possible that that missing vote will play a similarly consequential role in the weeks ahead. Perhaps in the months ahead.

The court process has to play itself out. There’s no way around that — though the judges seem ready to strangle Coleman. But we could do with a little more recognition of the fact that this is not about getting Norm Coleman into the senate. It’s about paying money to give the Republicans a few more months of leverage against the Democrats 59 seat majority.

Which GOP governors are grandstanding about maybe turning down their state’s stimulus money?

There’s a line from the philosopher Seneca which, in English, goes like this: Fate leads the willing and drags the unwilling. And that seems like an apt description of where the consensus is heading on the possible takeover of some of the biggest national banks. Lindsey Graham says he’s for it. Yesterday, Alan Greenspan said he was for it. And this new article from the Financial Times says the Obama administration is moving toward embracing the so-called Swedish model.

With regards to Obama, this seems more like tea-leaf reading than anything concrete and specific. But it does seem pretty clear that this is where everything is trending. The issue isn’t whether people like the idea of ‘nationalization’. It’s better framed as whether you a) want the government to temporarily take over certain banks or b) want to continue giving away hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in an effort that probably isn’t even going to work. Especially for Republicans, you really can’t be anti-bailout and anti-nationalization. Those are the only options.

We have to focus on the economic crisis.